2018-04-04
I would like to open today's Government meeting by announcing a very important initiative that involves an unprecedented step on our country's peaceful stable development.
It is a new peace initiative called Step toward a Better Future.
The Georgia authorities are taking concrete steps under the reconciliation and engagement policy, which seek to improve the humanitarian, social, and economic conditions of the populations in the Regions of Abkhazia and Tskhinvali, and to encourage contacts, movement, and relations based on mutual interests along and across the administrative boundary lines.
It is yet another open statement on our part to reaffirm that the peacemaking political trajectory pursued by our Government will surely continue which, despite many challenges, remains our unwavering, consistent, and continuous trajectory. In taking this step, we are countering the challenges, and this step is designed to build confidence and step up the process of reconciliation.
The package of legislative amendments on peacemaking, the development of which involved the Government and the parliamentary majority, incorporates three key directions:
1) Enhancing and simplifying trade along the boundary lines through creating new opportunities;
Under the initiative, it will be possible to support and encourage individual and joint business initiatives across the administrative boundary lines.
2) Creating additional opportunities for quality education and simplifying access at every level of education both at home and abroad;
Youths, their education and welfare on either side of the boundary lines, are important to us. They are the generation that will live together in a unified Georgia and participate in the country's building.
3) Creation of a mechanism simplifying access to the benefits and goods available to our country resulting from the country's development, including European integration, visa waiver, free trade rights, and others.
After the meeting, Ketevan Tsikhelashvili will hold a briefing to provide additional information in order to describe this issue in detail for our citizens. I urge you to provide the public with as much information as possible because general engagement is very important for the implementation of this initiative. Without engagement, it will prove quite difficult to ensure the successful implementation of such fundamental initiatives.